Spencer Lo's Blog (8)

Professor Gary Francione and Bruce Friedrich of Farm Sanctuary recently had a short, substantive exchange on…

There is an extraordinary story developing about a global effort to save two 11 year-old oxen from slaughter, whose bodies will serve the appetites of students at…

If you needed to torture puppies in order to enjoy the taste of chocolate, would doing so be wrong? Wouldn’t doing so be obviously wrong? Most who would say ‘yes’ regularly purchase and consume factory-farmed meat, seeing no problem with the latter, and yet, the two may not be morally distinguishable. According to at least one philosopher, they are not. In a highly provocative and creative paper,…

Like factory farming, animal experimentation is an entrenched practice, one which causes extensive suffering to millions of animals per year despite the…

Both from a strategic and moral standpoint, it is no surprise that when military action is contemplated, governments tend to favor effective tactics involving the least risk to human lives. Even better are effective tactics involving low risk to all human lives. If the goal of the military action is justified, what could be morally problematic with using such means? These widely held notions likely motivated the U.S. Navy’s…

My take on the ethics of eating "happy meat."

Suppose animals could be raised humanely, live considerably long lives, and then painlessly killed for food. Would eating such happy creatures be wrong? That question is suggested in a recent article by New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof, who answered it in the negative. According to…

This is another recent post of mine over at Animal Blawg, about the encouragement of youths to take up hunting.

In our culture, the moral divide between humans and animals is sharp in numerous areas, but perhaps most consciously so in one: the sport of hunting. Since the activity involves consciously deciding to kill another sentient, sensitive being, the issue of inflicting suffering and death cannot be avoided, at least for the hunter. At some point every hunter will inevitably…

I posted the following entry over at Animal Blawg: http://animalblawg.wordpress.com/2012/09/22/bullfighting-justifying-cruelty-with-tradition/#like-5094